Great White - "Rock Me"

(Debuted August 22, 1987, Peaked #60, 14 Weeks on the Chart)

"Rock Me" was the breakout hit from Great White, but the band had been working for nearly a decade before they made it big. Originally called Dante Fox, their eventual name came from guitarist Mark Kendall's white-blond mane. He wore white suits and played a white-colored guitar in those early days, so singer Jack Russell would introduce him before his onstage solos as "Mark Kendall, the Great White" and the name eventually stuck with the band.

"Rock Me" was a cut from the LP Once Bitten... and was more than seven minutes long. While album rock stations had no problem playing the song at that length, Top 40 stations opted to play edited versions that were between three and five minutes long. A tune that started off soft and built itself up as it approached the chorus (call it similar to foreplay -- or at least the initial excitement --  before the act of sex begins), it counted Aerosmith and Van Halen as influences.

Great White would enjoy more hits through the 1980s, they were among the bands that feel out of favor after the rise of grunge in the early 90s but managed to stay together despite a series of rotating members. Sadly, it took a tragedy to bring Great White back into the spotlight in 2003. During a concert in a Rhode Island nightclub, pyrotechnics started a fire that killed a hundred people, including guitarist Ty Longley. Actually, the band performing wasn't officially Great White but a group supporting Jack Russell during one of the band's hiatuses.

The Force MD's - "Love is a House"

(Not Available on iTunes)

(Debuted August 29, 1987, Peaked #78, 9 Weeks on the Chart)

Formed in Staten Island, New York in 1981, the Force MD's were a band that utilized the burgeoning hip-hop/quiet storm sound and mixed in the doo-wop influence from vocal groups of years past. Though not as well-regarded or considered to be as crucial as many other contemporary acts by the critics, they made their mark in the business. Their song "Tender Love" made an appearance in the film Krush Groove and became a Top 10 hit in 1986, giving them exposure to a wider audience. Although "Love is a Hose" failed to make the pop Top 40, it would become their first #1 R&B single and is still considered to be one of their finest singles.

However, as the "New Jack Swing" movement took hold by the end of the decade, the smoother R&B harmonies fell out of favor and the band's successes began to fade. There was some shuffling of membership, and eventually parts of the group's 1980s-era core were more permanently sidelined: Charles "Mercury" Nelson died from a heart attack in 1995 and Antoine "T.C.D." Lundy fell victim to Lou Gehrig's disease in '98. Furthermore, DJ Dr. Rock also died in the meantime.

The Jets - "You Got it All"

(Debuted November 15, 1986, Peaked #3, 26 Weeks on the Chart)

At the time, 1987 started off as a really good year for me. I was 14 years old and beginning to experience some of the extra freedom I was being given as a result of showing that I was mature enough to handle it. One of the things I did at that time was a monthly dance my church youth group had that let me go all the way to Syracuse and meet with kids from other towns around Upstate New York. And while there was the regular church-related stuff we had to sit through, there was one reason I really looked forward to the third weekend of every month.

You probably guessed it...there was a girl there. Brenda was a redhead, which has long been a particular weakness of mine. "You Got it All" was a hit around that time, and the song was played at the dances. I must have danced with her to this song at least once, because I still think of her when I hear it.

I haven't seen or heard about Brenda since I graduated from high school. And while I'm sure she's forgotten all about me by now, it would be great to find out how she's doing. Not to see if there's any spark left (after all, I'm happily married with a child and assume she is as well); rather, I'd love to see how a long-lost friend has been spending the last twenty-plus years.

"You Got it All" was one of five Top 10 pop hits for The Jets between 1986 and '88. It was also one of two #1 adult contemporary singles for them as well. The group was a family act, consisting of eight siblings originally from Tonga. The vocals were done by Elizabeth Wolfgramm, who was the same age as I was (well, she still is, come to think of it). The song was written by Rupert Holmes, who hadn't had any hits of his own since 1981's "I Don't Need You" -- featured on this blog back in March -- and had branched out into other music-related interests.

That's the power of music, especially music from your own youth. Even a quarter century later, hearing a song can take you back to a moment in time that would otherwise be lost forever.

Peter Wolf - "Come As You Are"

(Not Available on iTunes)

(Debuted February 28, 1987, Peaked #15, 15 Weeks on the Chart)

Memories are made of this...in the spring of 1987, I was in the ninth grade and on the junior varsity baseball team. Before heading out to the field one afternoon for practice, one of my teammates started singing this song as we walked through the hall of the school. As he sang the lines, I went ahead and added the "woo woo" part at the end of each line for him. While my baseball "career" was over after that year (I finally realized I wasn't as good as I thought I was), this song takes me back to that moment whenever I hear it.

After leaving the J. Geils Band in 1983 to go solo, Peter Wolf had a couple of successful records and a handful of hit singles. "Come As You Are" would be his final Top 40 hit, as well as a #1 song on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks. It was another tune that seemed to show off Wolf's sense of humor and the showmanship he picked up as a radio DJ and over 16 years of fronting his former band.

That spilled over into the song's video as well (shown below). Aside from the gimmick of having Wolf jumping all over the place, the question begs to be asked: how many 1950's Middle America stereotypes can you fit in a video? The milkman is there, along with the traffic cop, the kid on the vintage bicycle, another kid dressed up like a cowboy, a barber, a street sweeper, a shoeshine boy. There's even a street sign showing he's on a state road in Missouri. It may have been a pain to get all the details straight, but that video looked like it was fun to make.

John Cafferty - "Heart's On Fire"

(Debuted March 1, 1986, Peaked #76, 6 Weeks on the Chart)

Last time this blog swung through the year 1986 in April, Robert Tepper's "No Easy Way Out" was one of the featured songs. At the time, I made a quick reference to a scene in Rocky IV where Sylvester Stallone ran to the top of a mountain in Russia. In fact, "Heart's On Fire" was the song that accompanied that sequence.

I have absolutely no idea how this song only reached #76 when it came out. It was a perfect soundtrack song at a time where those were certain hits. Interestingly, it was a soundtrack that propelled John Cafferty (and his Beaver Brown Band) to national prominence; his vocals used in Eddie & the Cruisers became a belated hit after that movie began playing on cable stations.

Before that, Cafferty and his band were a Rhode island-based bar band with a loyal local following. However, the hits that followed up their breakthrough "On the Dark Side" pretty much stuck to teh formula and they soon wore out their welcome on the pop charts. When Cafferty recorded "Heart's On Fire" as a solo artist, he traded in the raw guitar sound with a very 1980s-themed synthesizer. Although many synth-based songs from the era haven't dated well, "Heart's On Fire" has held up pretty well over the years.

Perhaps there's a benefit to having your song forever linked with the sight of Sylvester Stallone running up to the top of a mountain range after giving his Commie escorts the slip.

Marilyn Martin - "Night Moves"

(Debuted January 18, 1986, Peaked #28, 18 Weeks on the Chart)

Shortly after she dueted with Phil Collins on the #1 hit "Separate Lives," Marilyn Martin managed to get a followup Top 40 hit. Despite that, she's been wrongly tagged as a "One-Hit Wonder" and "Night Moves" has largely been forgotten.

Martin received her recording contract after an executive heard her backing up Stevie Nicks during the recording of her LP Rock a Little and asked her for a demo. She had been doing backing vocals for several years before that, for such acts as Kenny Loggins, Tom Petty and ex-Eagles Don Henley and Joe Walsh. After "Night Moves," Martin's follow-up album and its singles failed, and she returned to session and backup work. By the 1990s, she moved to Nashville, where she's a realtor today.

"Night Moves" is definitely a 1980s tune, with its production, it's ominous synthesizer and a guitar solo that is very much a product of its time. If that's not enough, the video below is more 1980s greatness. It plays like a straight-to-VHS video release, where Martin plays a serial killer. In an era where Miami Vice was lauded for its stylistic approach because of its obvious MTV influence, music videos returned the favor.

Personally, I was surprised she never had any more success after that.

Jermaine Stewart - "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off"

(Debuted May 17, 1986, Peaked #5, 22 Weeks on the Chart)

During my teenage years, I was part of my church's youth group. Among the lessons we were taught there was the way popular music could be subversive, because it plants ideas into your head subliminally. So, after you've repeated the underlying message enough, things just seem to make sense. Those of you have been reading my reviews long enough know one of two things happened: either I paid no attention to the lessons, or the experiment was a miserable failure.

On the other hand, this song was pointed out as a positive message during the summer of 1986. It had lyrics that stated that promiscuity wasn't necessary: "I'm not a piece of meat, stimulate my brain" and "We don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time." Of course, the elders conveniently sidestepped the part about drinking wine (we weren't Catholic, after all) but there wasn't the "Just say no" component that other songs of the era, like "Let's Wait Awhile" and "I Wonder if I Take You Home" -- both sung by females, for what that's worth -- had.

And then there was the point that a buddy of mine brought up after seeing the video. He said, "I'm guessing he just doesn't care for the ladies." We know today that Jermaine Stewart eventually died in 1997 from liver problems brought about from his battle with AIDS, which adds a tragic angle to a statement like that. I wonder what those elders might have thought of the song if they'd have been able to know what would eventually happen with him.

Wow. That was quite a sidetrack.

Jermaine Stewart made his name as a dancer on Soul Train in the late 1970s and then as a backup singer for Shalamar. While "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off" was his biggest hit, he had a few others including another Top 40 single in 1988 called "Say it Again" that is sorely overlooked today.

Listening to "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off" today, I hear it as a relic of a time gone by. One where AIDS was a problem we knew very little about and didn't understand at all, where well-meaning elders tried to force a bunch of libido-driven teenagers to keep their pants on by making us frightened of what "might" happen. By the way, the tactic didn't work; my high school actually opened a day care center before I graduated in order to keep some of my classmates from having to drop out. Despite being obviously dated to the 1980s by its production and its music, it's actually a good, upbeat tune. It's definitely worth a few minutes to give it a listen.

Oran "Juice" Jones - "The Rain"

(Debuted September 13, 1986, Peaked #9, 18 Weeks on the Chart)

Oran "Juice" Jones was a newcomer to the music business in 1986. How new, you ask? About six months before recording his debut LP, he was an infantry officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Being born in Houston and raised in Harlem are things you'd expect to see on an R&B singer's resume, but a trip through the Naval Academy and leader of a company of troops are definitely unique.

The part that stood out for me with "The Rain" when I first heard it was the part at the end. After singing about discovering his lady was stepping out behind his back, he waits for her to come home so he can lay down The Law. However, instead of pulling out a gun and giving her a cold, hard lesson (like he says he might have wanted to), he took back all the gifts he gave her, cut off her money supply and let her walk away. That's an old school attitude: let her live with her mistake and know she did it to herself.

After further hits after "The Rain" failed to materialize, Jones eventually left the music business and took care of his mother as she battled a terminal illness. While that's not what you might expect from the guy you hear in the last couple minutes of "The Rain," it's something that you'd expect from a guy who was a Marine: duty bound and loyal to the end. Today, Jones has two children who are chasing their own musical careers.

Synch - "Where Are You Now?"

(Not Available on iTunes)

(Debuted March 1, 1986, Peaked #77, 12 Weeks on the Chart)

The numbers above may seem odd. Readers may remember this song as being a little more recent than 1986, and definitely making the Top 40. And they're right on both counts.

Synch was a band from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania fronted by Lou Butwin. Jimmy Harnen was the drummer, but was given the chance to sing vocals for "Where Are You Now" since he wrote the song. The power pop tune was a big hit around the band's home base and in a few other markets, but not enough to carry the song into the Top 40. When no more hits came, their label dropped them and the band eventually disbanded.

In 1989, "Where Are You Now" was rediscovered and began to pick up some airplay. Since power pop was much more in vogue, it eventually spread wider than it did in its initial chart run. Unfortunately, Synch had broken up and wasn't available to seize the moment, so Columbia re-released the single as "Jimmy Harnen with Synch" and Harnen was signed as a solo artist. The second wind was quite fortunate, as the song sailed into the Top 10. However, success didn't follow him again and Harnen was a two-time "One-Hit Wonder."

So...where is Jimmy Harnen now? He's still in the music business as an executive.

So...someday, I'll be really lazy when I'm working on songs from 1989 and toss this one in again. I promise, though, it won't be anytime soon.

Y&T - "Summertime Girls"

(Debuted July 13, 1985, Peaked #55, 10 Weeks on the Chart)

Y&T stands for "Yesterday and Today," which was the original name of the Oakland-based band in the 1970s. Although "Summertime Girls" is the group's biggest hit and perhaps the only one most casual listeners might recognize from them, they were a very influential group around their California home base, In fact, Lars Ulrich of Metallica has said in interviews that seeing Y&T live was one of the catalysts for his decision to become a musician, explaining that they seemed to really enjoy what they were doing.

The group broke up in 1991 but reformed several years later and continue to perform. Lead singer Dave Meniketti is the only member from the 1980s lineup left. Sadly, bassist Phil Kennemore passed away earlier this year from lung cancer.

"Summertime Girls" seemed to be playing on MTV all the time during the summer of '85. For that reason, it is another one of those songs that surprises me to see it missed the Top 40. In any case, it's a great song for the summer, regardless of the 1980s rock vibe it gives off.